The fifth and the biggest phase of the election season wound down to a close on Thursday with yet another surge in voter participation, presaging good tidings for the challenger Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi even though some cautioned against interpreting the high turnout that way given the notorious unpredictability of India's electorate.

As 121 Lok Sabha constituencies with some 17 crore eligible voters went to polls in 12 states from Karnataka to Jammu & Kashmir and including some 11 constituencies in the key battleground state of Uttar Pradesh, most places saw voting percentages rise sharply compared with the 2009 general elections, which analysts attribute to a combination of factors such as anti-incumbency, newly enfranchised voters to unprecedented levels of public engagement with politics.

BJP was quick to claim the high turnout as a sign of its impending victory. "Large turnout in the phases held till now shows Congress' departure is certain! Focus must now be on electing a stable and strong government," tweeted Narendra Modi. BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said the voting trends were going as per the party's calculation.

"The high polling percentage shows it is not only a wave in favour of BJP but something more than that. It confirms the enthusiasm among voters for good governance," BJP's Prakash Javadekar said. A succession of opinion polls has in recent weeks forecast the BJP-led NDA coalition emerging as the largest formation, with one even saying it would cross the halfway mark. But opinion polls have had a spotty record in the past, failing to call the 2009 and 2004 elections right. Also confusing the "high turnout equals anti-incumbency" argument was the fact that the voter turnout, although higher than the previous Lok Sabha election, was lower than that of the last assembly polls in many places.

"High or low voting percentage by itself does not reveal which way the votes are going. There have been several instances in the past where polling was high but the ruling party was voted in," said Rajeev Bhargava, senior fellow at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies.

And while Javadekar termed the high turnouts as good for BJP, a Congress spokesman interpreted it differently. "The fact that the people have come out in large numbers shows that they have voted for a change — to change their sitting BJP MPs," said MV Rajeev Gowda, a national spokesperson for Congress. Thursday's round of polling will determine the fate of figures such as former prime minister HD Deve Gowda and several union ministers and regional leaders like BS Yeddyurappa and IT icon Nandan Nilekani.

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad's constituency of Udhampur in Jammu & Kashmir saw a sharp spike in polling levels, rising to 69 per cent this time around from 45 per cent in 2009. The second phase of polling in Odisha for 11 Lok Sabha and 77 assembly constituencies saw an increase of four percentage points since the last elections of 2009 from 66 per cent to 70 per cent this time. BJP has termed the increase as a mark of an antiincumbency mood in the state resulting in widespread gains against the BJD state government and its sitting MPs.

But the dampener in at least a few states is the fact that the increase in turnout is over the last Lok Sabha polls. In fact, there was a dip in the turnout when compared with the last assembly elections. For instance, Karnataka had seen an unprecedented 72 per cent polling during the assembly elections last year and this time around, the average polling percentage for all 28 Lok Sabha seats is 65 per cent. This is the highest since 1957 and beats the 2009 figure of 58 per cent.

Similarly, in Rajasthan, which held elections for 20 of its 25 Lok Sabha constituencies on Thursday, the polling percentage rose to 63 per cent from 48 per cent in 2009. But the voter enthusiasm this time around appeared to have slipped compared with 75 per cent clocked in last year's assembly elections. Similarly, Chhattisgarh saw 63 per cent polling in its three seats, sharply higher when compared with 2009 levels of 58 per cent, but less than the assembly election figure of 75 per cent. While most states that went to polls on Thursday saw voting levels comfortably above 60 per cent, Maharashtra saw turnout in the 19 seats that went to polls remaining a low 55 per cent, just one percentage point more than 2009 levels.